When is a resigning matter not a resigning matter? When it involves a Maltese politician. Raphael Vassallo takes a look at our national culture of political responsibility (or lack thereof) and asks why we are so different from other European nations in this regard
In parliament last Monday, Opposition leader Joseph Muscat demanded the resignation of IT minister Austin Gatt over the theft of 20,000 government passwords and emails from government agency MITTS – including those of all members of parliament, the law courts, the police and the armed forces, and many more.
At 34, Muscat has often been criticised as “too young” for the post. And considering that similar calls for ministerial resignations have been made ad nauseam for years, without ever getting anywhere, one is tempted to put this latest example down to the youthful leader’s inexperience and exuberance.
Let’s face it: Austin Gatt is as likely to resign over the MITTS scandal, as PN secretary general Paul Borg Olivier is over his illegal request for data sharing between party and government. And yet, in all other democratic countries, both issues would almost certainly be considered prime resigninig matters. Indeed there are precedents on both counts: UK home affairs minister Charles Clarke was axed in a Cabinet reshuffle after refusing to shoulder his responsibility for over 1,000 dangerous criminals released through a bureaucratic blunder. And failure to distinguish between Party and State, specifically for the purposes of information gathering, had cost Richard Nixon the US presidency in 1973.
Something is clearly rotten in the state of our country’s political accountability, and nowhere is this more evident than the fact that neither Gatt nor Borg Olivier seems to even realise that they bear political responsibility in the above cases.
But with the exception of few isolated voices here and there – and even these, for the most part, politically motivated – there is no apparent public concern with a state of affairs that would be considered scandalous elsewhere.
So why is Malta so different from the rest of the democratic world when it comes to issues of political responsibility?
Political malaise
Former Green party chairman Harry Vassallo, who himself stepped down as party leader earlier this year, reasons that this is the result of an across-the-board political malaise.
“There is so much that happens here that is absolutely outrageous, that either everyone would have to resign, or nobody,” he says simply. “For instance, around a year ago we saw a Constitutional amendment which effectively resulted in a two-tier political system: one system for parties already represented in parliament, and another for everyone else...”
In fact, as a direct result of the last election, the Nationalist Party was awarded five extra seats to account for a difference between the parties of 1,500 votes. AD got more than double that amount, but failed to elect a single candidate.
The problem, Vassallo seems to be suggesting, is that we have become so used to injustices such as the above, that we no longer recognise them as injustices to begin with. This situation, he adds, is not limited to politics alone.
“Enemalta, for instance, hasn’t published its audited accounts since 2005. This is scandalous, and yet nobody here even bats an eyelid...”
Historical tenacity
But apart from widespread amateurism in all aspects of public life, it remains a fact that political tenacity enjoys a long and inglorious history in our country.
Vassallo is one of only a handful of political parties leaders to have handed in their resignation following a failed electoral target: in his case, that of electing more than one Green candidate to parliament in 2008.
This contrasts sharply with other party leaders in recent years: for instance, Eddie Fenech Adami, who resisted calls for resignation over the PN’s 1996 electoral defeat; or perhaps more cogently Labour leader Alfred Sant, who somehow managed to survive no fewer than three consecutive defeats (four, if you include the EU referendum).
In fact – with the possible exception of Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, who resigned as Labour leader after his second electoral defeat in 1992 – losing elections has never been considered reason enough to throw in the towel.
Former PM Dom Mintoff spent 34 years as party leader – in the course which he resigned his government in protest against British in 1958, without ever resigning himself (Mintoff ended his career as party leader by retiring when still in office).
An even better example would be George Borg Olivier, who took over the PN leadership from Enrico Mizzi in 1951, and stolidly refused to relinquish it even after his second consecutive defeat in 1976. In fact, the PN had to resort to decidedly backhand measures to oust the ailing Borg Olivier from his pedestal... and his successor would go on to lead the party for another 28 years.
Not unlike the papacy, it seems that party leadership is considered something of a lifelong appointment in Malta. And not unlike popes, ministers and prime ministers alike tend as a consequence to also view themselves as infallible.
Sabotaged institutions
Individual resignations in Malta may be few and far between, but to be fair they are not exactly unheard of. In 1997, then Justice Minister Charles Mangion tendered his resignation over a presidential pardon issued to a convicted drug trafficker, in breach of his own government’s declared “zero tolerance” policy on drugs.
Commenting today about the apparent rarity of such actions, Mangion – who has since been rehabilitated, serving as deputy party leader until last March – puts the situation down to an overall lack of accountability, in part due to the undermining of institutions which are supposed to guarantee the transparent functioning of government in the first place.
“This reality was manifested even within the (parliamentary) Public Accounts Committee... which I chair, although do not exercise a casting vote,” he points out. “We have witnessed situations where persons harshly criticised for flagrant breaches of financial regulations have been defended, while the Auditor General, who is the guardian of the public interest, was chastised by government representatives on the same committee. This attitude turns the culture of accountability and responsibility on its head.”
Ironically, the same party to once oppose EU membership at all costs, now turns to the EU as a beacon of proper governance. “As EU members I am sure that the majority of the population expects a higher degree of accountability and responsibility,” Mangion continues. “I am sure that when the people opted for the EU, they were expecting that criteria deeply entrenched in the cultures of many European countries would percolate effectively into our political and public administration systems. Unfortunately, political convenience rather than the safeguarding of the public interest, still prevails.”
When do ministers resign, anyway?
On the subject of European standards, it must be said there are no hard and fast rules governing ministerial resignations across the entire Union.
To take one example: in the UK, ministerial accountability in the cabinet is governed by two Constitutional conventions: individual ministerial responsibility, and that of the collective cabinet as a whole.
Significantly, the first convention also covers the behaviour and conduct of the ministry’s staff, as well as the employees of departments which fall under the minister’s portfolio.
As for the second, it doesn’t always work in practice. Recently we saw how former Prime Minister Tony Blair sidestepped any blame for the intelligence failure behind the Iraq war. Having assured the British public that Saddam Hussein possessed “weapons of mass destruction capable of being launched within 45 minutes”, Blair resisted all calls for his resignation when it turned out that this intelligence had been based on single, unreliable informant; and was in any case proved wrong.
Instead, it fell to the individual Cabinet ministers who had opposed the war from day one – such as foreign minister Robin Cook – or who had based their reluctant support on the available intelligence – like Clare Short – to step down in protest.
Elsewhere in Europe, however, collective responsibility is sometimes taken to extremes. Under President Jacques Santer, the entire European Commission resigned en masse in 1999, following allegations of widespread corruption. And the government of the Netherlands similarly stepped down as a body in 2002, after a report criticized the Dutch army’s role in the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia in 1995.
Resignation as a political tool
But this level of political responsibility remains elusive in Malta, despite the “new way of doing politics” supposedly ushered in by Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi in 2003.
Gonzi in fact retained his predecessor’s reputation for defending his disgraced ministers... but there was one, notable exception: former Foreign Minister John Dalli, who proved to be the first (and to date only) cabinet casualty of the Gonzi administration.
Ostensibly, the reasons for John Dalli’s resignation in 2004 involved a string of personal misconduct allegations. He was implicated in a hospital tender irregularity, unfairly favouring one foreign bidder (INSO) over another (SIMED) for a highly lucrative government contract. But the report upon which this rumour was founded later turned out to be a forgery.
Dalli was also accused of illicit procurement of airline tickets through a company in which his own family was reportedly involved. But again, a national audit into all ministries’ airline ticket procurements found several anomalies in various departments... but significantly, exonerated Dalli of all wrongdoing.
And yet Dalli resigned all the same, citing “internal and external” attacks upon his reputation... and singling out Times journalist Ivan Camilleri, brother to Gonzi’s then personal assistant Alan Camilleri, as the main source.
In an interview with Illum last month, John Dalli finally broke his silence on the real reasons behind what has since been revealed as a forced resignation.
“When I resigned I did not know the full facts,” he told our sister paper. “I was so incredulous that the airline tickets issue could have been cause for resignation, that in my resignation letter I myself asked the Auditor Genral to investigate... Now, in the light of the Auditor’s conclusions, I can confirm that the strategy that had been worked out for my forced resignation had been based entirely on the forged report by Joe Zahra...”
Dalli also pointed out that the individuals involved in this conspiracy had meanwhile all been promoted in one way or another: evidence, he seems to suggest, of a political conspiracy.
So far from proving the exception that makes the rule, the Dalli case suggests an altogether more sinister side to Malta’s unorthodox notions of political responsibility: here was a minister forced to resign, not on account of his own misdemeanours or those of his immediate subordinates, but rather because he had committed the unthinkable crime of running against Eddie Fenech Adami’s anointed successor for the party leadership.
Tolerant electorate
But there may also be a deeper, underlying reason for our general lack of resignation culture: the apparent non-existence of public pressure for ministers and other public officials to take responsibility for their actions.
According to Harry Vassallo, the reason politicians find it so hard to shoulder political responsibility is that there is no impetus for them to do so from the electorate... in sharp contrast to other European countries, where public opinion is both unforgiving and vociferous.
“If a German member of parliament makes a mistake – for instance, alluding to the Jews or the Nazis in a half-joking way – he or she would have no option to resign,” Vassallo argues. “Not necessarily because of shame or regret; but because otherwise, the political party concerned would have to take responsibility for the gaffe, and would be heavily penalized by the electorate in the next election.”
Vassallo claims that the last part of the equation simply does not apply to Malta.
“Because of situations like the Constitutional amendment, the electorate has been made to feel it does not have a real choice. So politicians know they can get away with murder, without paying any price if they get caught...”
Recent events appear to support this hypothesis. Far from dashing Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s electoral chances, Sant’s revelations about the “Green politician of the year” before the election appear to have actually boosted his performance. Similarly, Jesmond Mugliett survived numerous corruption allegations, to sail unimpeded into parliament. Even the Dalli case is a good example: what pressure there was came not from the general public, but rather from forces at work against him within his own party.
By the same token, when individual demands are made for ministerial resignations – like Joseph Muscat’s last week – they are rarely reflective of public opinion. In the final analysis, then, it seems we get to keep the underperforming and/or misbehaving ministers we so richly deserve.
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